How Quiet Helps at School
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Shows how a class can study and work better if the room is quiet. Demonstrates ways to study without interrupting others. Indicates that noise does have a place on the playground.
Ken Smith sez: This film starts off dull, but then it gets pretty strange. First, we're taken on a tour of a typical, boisterous grade school classroom ("You couldn't be proud to be part of such a noisy room, could you?" asks the narrator), and then we're taken into the classroom of "Miss Bradley" -- a place where all sound has apparently been banished. Miss Bradley tells us that keeping a classroom this quiet is good because it's "like an office," and that "knowing when to be quiet is a part of growing up." A cheerful geek named "Bobby" then gives several demonstrations of quiet behavior, and the narrator ends the film by asking, "This is a good room, isn't it?" Pretty weird stuff; lots of dead air. Watch for the scenes displaying the strange, tabletop "model farm."
Danger Lurks Safety
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- Addeddate
- 2002-07-16 00:00:00
- Ccnum
- asr
- Closed captioning
- no
- Collectionid
- 19306
- Color
- B&W
- Country
- United States
- Identifier
- HowQuiet1953
- Numeric_id
- 548
- Proddate
- 1953
- Run time
- 10:11
- Sound
- Sd
- Type
- MovingImage
- Whisper_asr_module_version
- 20230805.01
comment
Reviews
(8)
Subject: Bobby's seen some things.
Bobby knows how bad these outbursts can get. You can see it in his eyes. This boy has seen some things.
Subject: Hyperbole To Make A Point
The point is that some teachers (Miss Georgia Sammartino for example [bless her heart]) operated a noisy busy ass room, but that was her very characteristic way of taking time and energy to literally "customize" her teaching for each and every kid in that class (we're talking 35 kids or so, some very dysfunctional, some, like me, gifted). I spent afternoons sent outside to play, mornings reading 5th grade books, and was given the dubious role of "police" not the least, to control the pervy kid that kept walking around the room sticking his thingy out at everybody (one wonders what that was all about).
On the other hand, Miss Moore required that a pin could be heard hitting the floor, but all that did was make six year old kids so nervous they all had zits by the end of the semester (and were no smarter far as I could tell).
This film tends to drag out a bit, but the acting is good.
Subject: Common Sense
Of course there is no evidence that the modern noisy classroom environment is working. The evidence is all to the contrary. This film is just common sense. Unfortunately, there's not much common sense left in this country where people uphold the value of a room full of unruly kids as wonderful.
Ironically, more violence, more bullying and less education is going on in the brave new world of the modern public school. People speak of respect and safety; but it's all talk and no action. Ask any child; are they safe? Are they respected at their school? They will tell us the truth. Do we want the truth? Or are we more interested in hearing what we want to believe? Which is that the Brave New World is a success and that everything in these corny films is wrong.
As for the teacher being mean; life is mean and what we are dealing with in today's youth culture (just read the newspaper) is far meaner than any 20th Century student of a "mean" teacher, a teacher who kept her room quiet, could ever have imagined. Just ask the elderly still among us what they thought of their education in light of today's state of affairs. But, we probably don't want to know.
Subject: School "types" and divisions
The special-ed dumb kids and "ethnic" kids are the loud noisy ones?
Seriously, ... though-- that first (noisy) classroom just sounds like a bunch of normal kids getting some good work done. I don't see what the "problem" is.
The Fifties were straitlaced, weren't they?
That Bobby looks like a young Jeffrey Dahmer.
Subject: Miss Bradley
Subject: Child abuse of the 50s
It brings back memories of teaches I had in those days with such restrictive ... teaching practises.
The reality was that these cruel attitudes created the later rebellious behaviour in teen life of the early sixties and a hatred for learning.
They believed that children must be seen and not heard. give me the first class any time.
Subject: Too much quiet!
Subject: RUN! RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN!